Monstergirl Quest, page 22
Quickly and forcefully, I pulled back from her slightly, unlocked her legs from my waist then threw her left leg over my shoulder.
She gasped in surprise at this quick change in position, but she didn’t protest, especially not when I had enough room to tend to her nub.
With her leg up over my shoulder, I reached down to her hot mound and began massaging her rosebud with my thumb.
“E-E-Earthman…” she said, her voice rising gradually toward a piercing crescendo as I thrust into her, as I circled my thumb around her cherry.
She took my free hand and laid it between her breasts, over top of her heart, and gripped my wrist tight as I kept pumping into her.
Her chest rose and fell more quickly now, more rapidly, and I could see that she was starting to tremble, minor tremors before an earthquake.
I was gritting my teeth again, fighting tooth and claw against my own impending release, the inevitability of my own explosion, for just a little bit longer.
“Earthman!” she whispered, her voice rising yet again.
Quite suddenly, her entire body snapped tight, her back arching into a sharp angle, and she screamed.
Her cry of orgasmic bliss echoed throughout the dark barn. She grabbed me tight, pulled me close, right against her, and gave me a wet kiss as she came.
She pulled my face to hers, resting my forehead against her own, nodding along with me as I thrust myself into her.
She squeezed herself tight and warm against my erection inside of her, looking into my eyes, breathing heavily.
“Finish inside of me, Earthman…”
Now, I felt myself tensing within her, an immensely pleasurable yet intense tingling that went from my erection up into my belly.
My mouth shot open wider and a faint moan escaped my lips as the pressure continued to build.
“Now, Earthman, now, please…”
Eyes locked on hers, I finally let myself go.
I shouted and called out her name as I drove into her, as deeply as I could, a mere heartbeat before I erupted.
My entire body shuddered. I dug my fingertips into the cot mattress below us, and drove into her again.
Just as it had happened with Sephara, a sudden and brilliant display of magical, ancient runes and symbols flashed across my vision.
SKILL UNLOCKED: MYSTICISM MAGIC
I held myself inside of her, content on remaining here forever, as I spent myself inside of her depths.
Then, when it was over, we both lay there, trying to catch our breath.
She swallowed, took a deep breath, and she trembled some more as she felt my last few beads trickle from my erection down into her fertile womb.
Pandora kissed my cheek, wiped the beads of sweat from my brow, and now I saw the faintest flickers of light within her dark eyes. She leaned her head backward, gazed upward, and the dull light flickered brighter.
Holy shit, her magic was starting to come back. Slowly, for sure, but there was no other explanation for it: Binding with me had somehow helped her regain some semblance of her former magical connection.
And, in regaining that ability, she’d gifted me the ability to use mysticism magic.
“Earthman, I’d like to show you something,” Pandora said. “But you must promise me to keep it sacred, and never tell another living soul.”
“You know that I wouldn’t,” I said.
She smiled, because of course she knew that.
Pandora raised her hands then placed her fingertips on my temples. She slowly massaged them. “Close your eyes, Earthman, so I can show you,” Pandora said, as my vision began to grow cloudy, alternating shades of smoke-gray and midnight black.
Chapter Twenty-Four
From those alternating shades of gray and black, the world suddenly turned a brilliant shade of forest green, and then we were walking upon a hillside.
I wore only pants and a cotton shirt. Pandora, walking next to me and holding my hand, wore the flowing, yet somewhat revealing kimono that the Mananymphs preferred.
Somehow, she managed to look even more beautiful here, in this waking almost-dream. Her hair flowed freely, she didn’t have to hide her ears, and the kimono left her shoulders bare, so she could stretch her wings freely.
She walked barefoot beside me, holding my hand tight, and that was when I recognized our surroundings.
“This…this is where I first arrived here,” I said, and I even saw the entrance to that crypt built into the nearby hillside.
“Yes,” Pandora said, though when she spoke, her lips didn’t move. “This is that hallowed ground, yes…but this is what it looked like before that final battle.”
I furrowed my brow. “What…”
But then I realized what she’d meant.
This wasn’t a dream. This was a memory, and Pandora was sharing it with me.
Nearly two-thousand years ago, this was the day that the False Champion made his last stand against the Necromancer.
Being inside her memory, being one with her, Pandora could easily read my thoughts. She smiled, and I felt her voice bleed into my consciousness. “Yes, Earthman,” she said. “I was here that day.”
She nodded ahead, to some rustling in the leaves closer to the crypt door, and then I saw her, rushing through the foliage with a worrisome look on her face, and a handful of Homehold troops clamoring behind her, trying to keep up.
“Hurry, you all must hurry!” she said as they lagged behind her.
This version of Pandora looked much like the one I knew, the one whose hand I was holding, but she didn’t radiate the same confidence. No leather assassin’s outfit, either, but another kimono, though this one was tattered and stained with blood and grime.
She flung the door open and ushered the soldiers inside as a small horde of skeletons broke through the forest behind her.
Her daggers were nowhere to be seen. Instead, she drew a battered silver shortsword with far less confidence than I was used to.
“I was just a young girl then,” she explained to me. “But I believed in our Champion. I believed in her very much.”
“But…I thought the Champions were men?” I asked.
“No, not always,” Pandora answered, then nodded ahead, where her younger self stepped nervously toward the advancing undead.
What the younger Pandora lacked in combat skills, she made up for with magic. When the skeletons first fell upon her, she was just barely able to keep herself alive, sloppily and clumsily slashing at them with her sword.
Yet, just before they could overwhelm her, she shot out her open palm and blasted them with a powerful telekinetic burst. The skeletons came apart, bone by bone, but young Pandora wasn’t in the clear yet.
Now, three bone knights emerged from the trees. Young Pandora backed away slowly, fumbling at her supplies, trying to uncap a bottle of restore mana potion.
“She was a fine warrior,” Pandora said to me as the False Champion leaped out of the crypt to come to her aid.
She was a pretty woman, a few years older than me. She wasn’t large, but she was athletic obviously, judging by the way she moved in her patchwork armor, both silver and orcish to complement the shimmering Soulguard on her right hand.
I paused when I saw that. Did the Soulguard change itself to compliment whoever was worthy of wearing it?
Despite her heavier armor, the False Champion preferred short blades. Specifically, the twin black dragontooth daggers that Pandora wore on her hip now.
Though she would eventually turn out to be the False Champion, she didn’t fight like one.
She slashed and cut through the bone knights in no time, then smiled at the young Pandora.
I tried to fight it off, but the jealousy rumbling in my thoughts was obvious, and Pandora tightened her fingers around my hand. “Don’t be jealous, Earthman,” she said. “The False Champion and I were never right for each other. She bound herself to others, not to me, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love her.”
We left that hillside memory for other, quicker memories, like a broken movie projector flashing scenes at random.
Though they weren’t lovers – which I selfishly was glad to see, but hey, I can’t help being jealous – Pandora and the False Champion shared something much deeper than mere friendship.
Pandora communicated this to me via a panoply of quick images and emotions, and I realized that, while Mother Gaia was a loving god, she wasn’t the most attentive parent.
To the young Pandora, an adolescent Mananymph trying to come to terms with her own immortality and magic, the False Champion had been like a mother, like an older sister. But even as Pandora showed me these images and let these emotions flow into me, it was all against a backdrop of staggering heartbreak.
“Oh no…” I said, because I realized what she was going to show me next.
Now we were back inside the crypt, where I’d awakened in the deepest chamber, right in the heart of those cavernous hallways. The ground was flooded with the blood of Homehold soldiers, littered with the bony remains of fallen skeletons and liches.
Among it all, the False Champion was taking on the Necromancer, the Dark King himself. King Darkheart.
The Necromancer was quick despite his big, thick, lumbering demonic armor. He was winded from a long battle, gripping his demonic claymore with both hands.
The False Champion was even more exhausted, bleeding from a dozen wounds, her red human blood trickling down over her patchwork armor.
Only then did it register with me that she had placed a Gaia Stone on the Soulguard. That was why it was glowing bright white, why it was shimmering and crackling with magical energy.
Yet, despite this advantage, the white magical light was beginning to flicker and die.
The False Champion snarled as she swung the glowing gauntlet at the Necromancer’s head. There was a nuclear-bright flash of lightning upon impact, but the magical discharge seemed to hit the False Champion just as hard. Both she and the Necromancer flew backward, each of them slamming hard into the stone walls on opposite sides of the chamber.
The light emanating from the Soulguard was dead. The False Champion could barely get to her hands and knees. She was spitting out her own loosened teeth, coughing up dark red blood. Across the room, the Necromancer was up on his feet, hurt, but laughing cruelly at the False Champion.
I saw then that the False Champion had only one of her twin daggers with her. The other appeared in Young Pandora’s hand as she crept up the hallway behind the towering undead wizard.
“No true Champions here,” the Necromancer said, because it was obvious that his foe was beaten.
The False Champion glared at him, spoke in a tongue that sounded like Ancient Roman, but with Pandora’s assistance, I was able to discern her words. “Kill me or shut the hell up,” was what the False Champion said.
I grinned at that. She was no pushover, and she had plenty of fire left in her belly, even as she was staring down death.
The Necromancer raised his demonic claymore high overhead, but before he could finish the False Champion off, Pandora burst into the chamber, screaming loud enough to wake the dead, screaming in utter defiance.
The Necromancer turned, bewildered by the young Mananymph’s presence, but the moment he laid eyes on her, Pandora let loose a blinding blast of mysticism energy.
“AHHHH!” Young Pandora screamed as she unloaded that telekinetic blast on the undead king.
The Necromancer roared in pain. The blast slammed him against the wall again, this time loosening or shattering much of his armor, revealing the pale, white undead pallor of his body beneath it.
His wicked demonic helm began to shatter, partially giving me a view of his face. His eyes had turned blood red, even more hateful than before, and his mouth was lined with row upon row of yellow and green teeth, sharper than a great white shark’s teeth.
Young Pandora fell limp to the ground, that final, massive magical attack leaving her barely conscious.
The Necromancer spit on the ground. “You’ll regret that, meddlesome fairy girl,” the Necromancer said in his cold, dead voice.
“No she won’t,” said the False Champion from behind him.
The Necromancer whirled around to face her, but it was too late. The False Champion screamed in his face as she drove the dragontooth dagger into his exposed throat, where the neck guard on his armor had fallen away.
The Dark King coughed up thick, viscous green blood, his eyes wide in disbelief as he grabbed at the dagger lodged in his throat. The False Champion only shoved it in deeper. The Necromancer, with whatever last bit of strength he had left, managed to thrust the tip of his demonic claymore into the False Champion’s side.
She grunted, a sudden rush of blood splashing to the ground from the new hole in her belly, where that obsidian blade sunk deeper into her side.
“No!” young Pandora screamed.
Despite her wound, despite the fact that a claymore had pierced her belly, the False Champion nevertheless managed to turn to young Pandora and give her a warm, matronly smile. “You did such a good job, Pandora,” she said in her ancient Roman tongue.
At that, the Necromancer came apart, immediately falling to the crypt floor in a pile of black dust among his heavy armor. Not a second after he evaporated, the False Champion succumbed to her injuries, and fell dead onto the floor.
My heart swelled with heavy sadness as young Pandora crawled over to the False Champion on her hands and knees. She cradled the woman’s head in her lap, weeping over her corpse, and then the memory dissolved.
Now, I was back in the barn with Pandora, her naked body curled up beside me. I saw tears in her eyes then, glowing golden in the candlelight. “That was the last time I used magic on my own accord,” Pandora said as I wiped the tears from her eyes. “And that, I told myself, was the last time I’d let my heart open to anyone. Until I met you.”
I held Pandora tight against me, then pulled up the meager blankets, to shield our bodies from the cold starting to leak into the drafty barn.
“I’m going to kill that undead motherfucker,” I told her. “You know that, don’t you?”
She smiled sadly, and though I’d wiped some away, more tears had come to replace those first teardrops. “This time, I do know that, Earthman,” she said. “But I won’t be able to rest easy until that day comes.”
Neither of us said a word after that. Instead, we lay in each other’s arms, warming each other from the creeping midnight chill. By the time the candle flickered out and that little corner in the barn yielded to the darkness, Pandora and I were both asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
To look at that lumpy, thin mattress on the cot, you wouldn’t think I’d get very good rest on it. Yet, when I woke up, with the lush warm sunlight spilling through the barn windows, I realized I’d slept better than I ever had in my life.
Then, just as I was wiping the sleep from my eyes, I remembered the notification that I’d gotten last night.
SKILL UNLOCKED: MYSTICISM MAGIC
Oh shit, I’d forgotten all about unlocking a school of magic after binding with a Mananymph. Last night, as she gave herself to me, Pandora had also given me the gift of learning mysticism.
Unfortunately, though the mysticism school was now unlocked for me, I wasn’t yet capable of learning spells. Or, at least, Pandora hadn’t telepathically taught me any, the way that Sephara had with her restoration skills.
I figured that was due to Pandora’s still mostly-severed connection with her mysticism powers. Last night, her pretty crystalline fairy wings had glowed with magical light, leading me to believe she was at least starting to mend her broken connection. Once she made that connection complete, she’d definitely be able to teach me a few spells.
She was already awake, silently sitting in the middle of the barn, legs crossed, meditating. I was careful not to disturb her, careful not to make a sound, though I was surprised to see what she was wearing.
When Pandora had gotten dressed upon waking up, she decided against her usual leather assassin’s outfit. She must have had her traditional Mananymph kimono hidden away within her pack, because she was wearing it now.
It was the very same kimono she’d been wearing in that memory. Tight in some spots, flowing in others, both majestic and revealing. The sunlight filtering in through the windows beamed over her exposed fairy wings and made them ripple with golden light.
There was a sudden, yet faint crackle of magical energy around her body, like some strange electrical aura, and once more her wings pulsed with that familiar magical light. She craned her head back, eyes still closed, and though she hardly moved a muscle, she slowly began rising from the floor.
I grinned, because it was obvious that she was tapping into her mysticism powers, however gradually. Within seconds, she was floating nearly a full twelve inches over the barn floor. And it was all due to her telekinesis, because she wasn’t even flapping her fairy wings to assist herself.
Her levitation only lasted a moment, though. She let herself drift back down to the floor then her eyes cracked open and a grin spread across her face. She looked at me and her grin sharpened.
“Did you see that, Earthman?” she asked, and it was heartwarming to hear the barely-restrained joy in her voice.
“Oh, I saw it alright,” I answered.
“I haven’t been able to levitate in…such a long time,” she said, and a passing sadness drifted through her eyes as she remembered the False Champion. But then it passed, and her eyes sparkled in the morning sunlight. “But I can feel it, Earthman. I can feel my connection to mysticism magic growing stronger.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I told her. “Speaking of which, you also gave me the ability to use mysticism. I don’t know any spells yet, but I’m sure you can help me with that soon enough.”
Pandora popped up to her feet, her kimono dancing with every movement, and shot back to the cot.
She threw herself on me, pushed me down on the mattress, straddled my waist and giggled as she kissed me. “Last night was so amazing that I keep forgetting we routed an army,” she said when our lips parted, when she lay her head upon my chest and nuzzled up against me.
